LlamaLawyer

Rocket Mortgage also just went public in 2020, which took Dan Gilbert from billionaire to obscene billionaire. Given he's got about 900% more paper assets to leverage than he did previously, I think it's reasonable to be optimistic about his being more aggressive.

I don't think this is a reach, per se, we just don't have any evidence of it. IF Dan Gilbert is the buyer (which there's no specific reason either to suspect or to discount as a possibility), I would expect a pretty awesome project, potentially even at the scale of Hudson's Site in Detroit. Since Rocket went public, he has such outrageous amounts of money that there would be no reason for him not to go big. He's clearly invested (in both senses of the word) in Cleveland to almost the same extent as Detroit.

In all seriousness, thanks @KJPfor bringing joy and excitement to a crappy, covid-wrecked end to 2021. I find more things to be pessimistic about every day, but I’m OPTIMISTIC about this city, and your reporting helps illuminate why that optimism is well founded. To 2022! May somebody build something on this parking lot!

Personally, I’m holding out for a McDonalds—not just any McDonalds though. One of the two-story ones with a playplace. 👌 mmmm, yes. As a backup, however, I will accept a 1200 ft. Jenga tower. Anything else is unacceptable. Mystery developer (David Blitzer prolly lol) these are your marching orders.

NUCLEUS IS DEAD; LONG LIVE NUCLEUS!! 😉

New estimate is Ohio lost about 10,000 people from July 2020 to July 2021. Not sure how accurate this is, as it seems to be based on 2020 estimates as opposed to actuals. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/2021-population-estimates.html

I have to prepare myself emotionally every time I see new activity in this thread.

I'd be up for that as well. 450 acres is huge, but it's less than a quarter the size of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, a third the size of Lincoln Park in Chicago, less than half the size of Balboa Park in San Diego, half the size of Central Park in NYC, and about a third larger than Piedmont Park in Atlanta. In other words, sure you don't have to allocate all the land to a park, but even if you do, you're not talking about a park of unprecedented size. Most of those parks have multiple uses such as zoos, museums, golf courses, etc. To get the powers that be to support turning Burke into a park, maybe all we have to do is suggest the park include 9 holes. 😉

Enticing for what and to whom? A developer? With the amount of vacant land we have, why would any developer want to try to convince the city to sell land that is actively used as an airport so that maybe 10 years down the line, the developer could build on 5% of the land? So I agree building housing on Burke makes no sense. The highest and best use for the land is a recreational public use. While I understand there are good arguments against closing Burke now that it already exists as an airport, it seems patently obvious (to me at least) that if the land were a mere blank slate, the best use would be as some sort of recreational public space, whether or not a park, per se. In other words, if Burke weren't currently used as an airport, nobody would suggest it should be. So, I think the question should be "If Burke could feasibly be converted to some sort of public use (Like, for instance, Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Zilker Park in Austin, Fairmount Park in Philadelphia), wouldn't we have seen something proposed by the city?" And the answer is NO, because the city has never given the idea a fair shake. I get so passionate about this topic just because there are plenty of cities out there that have massive (greater than 100 acre) downtown parks, including Atlanta, Austin, Philadelphia, NYC, Chicago, Milwaukee, Buffalo, and San Diego. Doing something else with Burke is our only chance to join those ranks and have such a park. (Irishtown Bend will be AMAZING, but it's only 25 acres and won't have the same sort of impact a 450-acre park would.) So before that ship sails forever, I'd like to see an unbiased, open-minded analysis that concludes NO, closing Burke would hurt the city. If that's the case, then so be it.

This is VERY plausible, but you still never know what will turn up. Sometimes when RFPs are done basically just for show, you will get a dark horse proposal that looks way better than the one the city was planning on.

Big influx of money to Hopkins, Akron-Canton, the County airport, Burke, and a few smaller regional ones I hadn't even heard of. I'm sure we would have to give the Burke money back if we switch to another use, but with more money going to ALL the surrounding airports, could this be a golden opportunity? https://www.cleveland.com/news/2021/12/ohio-airports-including-cleveland-hopkins-will-fly-high-on-money-from-infrastructure-deal.html

https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2021/12/15/northeast-ohio-one-of-60-finalists-for-massive-1-billion-build-back-better-regional-challenge Some really good reporting from Sam Allard here. Very exciting for the region if some of this stuff wins, which sounds pretty likely.

Crispy Chick is pretty good and thanks for reminding me that the Opportunity Corridor makes Crispy Chick a whopping 2 minutes closer to my house! I vote that we rename Opportunity Corridor to Crispy Chick Blvd. Seriously though, I don't think we can evaluate Opportunity Corridor until we see what happens in the next 5-10 years. You gotta give the businesses that are supposedly gonna develop along the route a little chance to get developed. If there is no further development, then yes, Opportunity Corridor will have been an expensive disaster. But you have to hope there will be some good things.

Didn't Warner Swasey get a $2 million grant from the city from ARPA money? Do they actually need the tax credit with that infusion?

I must say I love the way University Circle is developing a skyline of 7-20 story buildings. I know we start heavy breathing on this site when we think about supertalls and skyscrapers, but I really love the actual feel of walking in an area like what University Circle is becoming. The midrise buildings create a very dense feel and yet don't block out the sun and create shadows for 90% of the day. There's something so comfortable and yet energetic about it.

I love that they're starting with the tower rather than the pavilion or garage. It just feels like jumping into the excitement with two feet.

I don’t think the weather is close to the biggest factor in people moving south. Over the last ten years, a huge chunk of the relocations to TX and AZ have been from CA. And I don’t think there are many people out there who prefer most TX or AZ weather to most CA weather. It’s about standard of living, and the kids of folks who move to Phoenix and Las Vegas today will be NOPE!-ing right out in 25 years when they’re faced with $500 a month water bills. To bring this back to Cleveland, the census data shows pretty clearly that the population loss is coming from impoverished neighborhoods like Kinsman and Mt Pleasant. Making those neighborhoods (at least most of them) into livable places that residents don’t feel the need to flee is probably the biggest key to unlocking growth.

I will always remember this lot as the place my wife got cat-called in Portuguese by a bunch of Brazilian dudes. Farewell.

Marginal improvements to a site plan that was already fine. I'm looking forward to when people stop talking about this and top of the hill on Nextdoor, which may occur by 2027 if we're lucky.

If Burke really is a "major economic development asset," then it will not be closed. My point is that I'm glad the land use is getting investigated and discussed in a meaningful way. Burke's traffic is way down, despite a couple recent years of uptick, and we need a lot more analysis about what effect closing it would have, because I don't think any of us really know. Finally, the "endless acres" north of the stadium are in fact about 25 acres. Burke is more like 450. The area north of the stadium takes up 300 meters of lakefront, while Burke takes up two miles of lakefront. The total Cleveland shoreline adds up to about 17 miles. So more than 10% of the lakefront is currently used for an airport. That's why I'm saying I'm glad the new administration will evaluate the issue in an open minded way. Closing Burke may turn out to be an idea with no legs, but it's well worth thinking about.

I saw both the above ads on 19 basically back to back yesterday. The first one made me feel weirdly comforted that the first CityBlock project isn't happening. The second one is far more disturbing to me because it reminds me of how recent J.D. Vance's descent into Trumpism is. The tweets the attack ad references are from 2016 and 2017, but those tweets didn't get deleted until July, 2021. The way the dominoes CONTINUE to fall for Trump astounds me. The party has solidified around Trump even more since January 6, and the Republican primary is clearly going to be a contest of who is Trump's best widdle boy.

RE: Mayor Bibb and Burke, I'm just glad that its future will be discussed by an administration that all else equal would probably like it to be used for something else. The previous administration clearly had a bias toward keeping it open and would look for excuses to do so. If it turns out a better use isn't feasible, so be it. I will cry one very large single tear, raise my fist toward the sky and cry "Curse you, William R. Hopkins!" But it will be nice to know that the idea of closing Burke was at least given a fair shake.

When I moved to Cleveland Heights in the early 2010s, the going rate for a 1 bd apartment in the area was about $650/mo. Why would anyone build new in that kind of market?

I agree with the sentiment, I just don’t think that we’re in a position as a city to be making demands of developers who want to come in and do B+ design work. We do routinely demand more from poorly conceived projects, but I think you would agree this project is not poorly conceived, it’s pretty good, B+, just not at the level you want for the city we love. If 10 years from now we’ve reversed the population loss, grown the metro by 5%, gotten downtown’s population to 35,000, gotten more than one real grocery store downtown, etc. then yeah why settle for less than A- work, but I just don’t think we’re there yet. As Cleveland climbs back, we’ll get a variety of types of development, some great, some just ok. Great cities are a patch work.